One more to see: Rennie Harris gets funky at New Victory

Performers from
Rennie Harris: Funkedified,
a world premiere at New Victory Theater
(photo: Brian Mengini)

Two acclaimed Philadelphia dance crews--Rennie Harris Puremovement and The Hood Lockers--are tearing up the stage at New Victory Theater, now through June 10. If you love popping, locking, breaking and all things street dance, go see Rennie Harris: Funkedified.

The premise of this expert world premiere production is a remembrance of the funk music and dancing of the 1970s--think James Brown and Soul Train--that set Harris on his path to becoming one of the world's best-loved masters of hip-hop artistry. A marvelous five-piece band, led by guitarist Matt Dickey and drummer Doron Lev, brings the funk in a big, joyous way. Several cloth panels, hanging above the band like a quilt, capture projected imagery--some hazy, some abstract, some psychedelic--as well as Bob Steineck's luscious, saturated lighting as we hear Harris's musings on his cultural past. His voice--echoey and phantasmal--seems to emerge from out of a cloud or the depths of a dream--but the ingenious, passionate dancing and music speak for themselves.

The New Vic is a family-oriented theater and, at this Saturday matinee, most folks in the audience were small kids in booster seats sitting quiet and polite throughout the show. I kind of longed for an audience of Black teens who'd know just what to do with what we were seeing and hearing! It took a while for any heads to start bopping to the fantastic music--and they were adult heads. I just hope there were youngsters in the audience checking out, in particular, Puremovement soloist Leigh “Breeze-Lee” Foaad whose fluidity, range and poignancy should prove a powerful inspiration.

Rennie Harris Puremovement: Shafeek Westbrook, Katie Cruz, Joshua Culbreath, Phil Cuttino Jr., Tatiana Desardouin, Leigh “Breeze-Lee” Foaad, Mai Lê Hô-Johnson and Yuko “Uko Snowbunny” Tanaka

The Hood Lockers: Ricky “Glytch” Evans, Joshua “J Peazy” Polk, Andrew “Riot” Ramsey and Marcus “Epic” Tucker

Musicians: Shareef Clayton (trumpet), Matt Dickey (Music Director; guitar), Doron Lev (Music Director; drums), Nicholas Marks (keys), Osei Kweku (bass) and FKAjazz (saxophone)

Sound design/composition/production: Darrin Ross
Visual design: Jorge Cousineau
Lighting design: Bob Steineck

Rennie Harris: Funkedified runs through Sunday, June 10. For information and tickets, click here.

New Victory Theater
209 West 42nd Street (between 7th and 8th Avenues), Manhattan
(map/directions)

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Let's dance! Rennie Harris rules the Joyce

 

Top: Kyle Clark, Bottom: Ryan Cliett
of Rennie Harris Puremovement
(photos by Brian Mengini)

Rennie Harris Puremovement's just-opened retrospective at The Joyce Theater, running through Sunday, finds Philadelphia's fiery hip hop ensemble dropping knowledge about the best way to stream street and club dance moves through conventional dance venues. We're talking two different worlds here, mainly because of who pays attention to the social, vernacular sphere vs. who pays attention to contemporary theatrical dance and how they pay attention and respond. If those aesthetic borderlines have gotten more porous for dance artists since Harris founded RPHM in 1992 and went on to win strong popular and critical success, give credit to the man for meticulous leadership--laying down a foundation of technical authenticity and skill.

Watching b-boying, voguing and related arts of the body in an official Hall of Dance shifts one's way of seeing: You're looking for a less sporadic and less frontal presentation, something more kaleidoscopic and something with interesting context. You're also looking for kinds of variety and subtlety that the excellent Harris crew are perfectly prepared to show you over a leisurely stretch of time--rhythmic precision, uncommonly supple physicality, footwork that can rival tap dancers for agility and complexity, and a gymnastic approach to the body that utilizes more body surfaces and levels and directional orientation and speed that we're used to. Crazy stuff. It's particularly great to watch the ensemble's women dancers--Danita Clark, Katia Cruz, Mai Le Ho Johnson and Mariah Tlili--no less forceful for adding a gleeful, distinctive juiciness to their propulsion.

The Joyce program, nearly two hours with an intermission, includes the 1997 Rome & Jewels (Harris's striking, award-winning take on Romeo and Juliet crossed with West Side Story, Shakespeare filtered through the ways and lingo of a couple of "star-crossed homies"), Continuum (1997), P-Funk (1992), March of the Antmen (1992) and Students of the Asphalt Jungle (1995).

Rennie Harris Puremovement continues at the Joyce through Sunday, February 2. For schedule and ticketing details, as well as the January 29 Dance Chat and January 31 Master Class information, click here.

The Joyce Theater
175 Eighth Avenue (corner of 19th Street), Manhattan
(directions)